12 - 18 April 2001
Issue No.529
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 April 2001 Issue No.529 |
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Egyptocentrism?
The Arabic Novel: Bibliography and Critical Introduction, 1865-1995 (Six Volumes, in English and Arabic), Hamdi Sakkut, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2000.The Arabic novel is a young genre. Following the emergence of more and more Arabic novels of stature over the past decade, however, it has also come to be among the most celebrated. The present publication, a huge undertaking in six volumes of bilingual Arabic and English text, appears to have been conceived in part as a response to this recent success and to the widespread critical attention now being paid to the novel. In his recent, aptly named essay on the Arabic novel, "The Era of the Novel," (Zaman Al-Riwaya, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, 1999), the critic Gaber Asfour writes that "when we look at the Arabic novel these days, ten years after celebrating the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz and two years after celebrating the inauguration of the Cairo International Festival for Novel Creation -- whose Grand Prix Abd al-Rahman Munif so deservedly received -- it appears to be the literary genre most capable of capturing the discordant detail of our time."
Timing notwithstanding, according to Hamdi Sakkut, the principal author of this remarkable reference work, the novel first appeared in Arabic literature towards the end of the 19th century. "When the novel is discussed in international literary circles," Sakkut writes in his essay "A Critical Introduction to the Arabic Novel" (translated by Roger Monroe), which occupies much of Volume One of the present work, "English and French critics tend to agree that the novel began in the early decades of the nineteenth century. [However,] the Arabs did not write this kind of literature until the late nineteenth century in Egypt and Greater Syria, to be exact." Sakkut's account of the cultural atmosphere of this early period in the development of the Arabic novel focuses on the conditions that enabled the novel's rise. "One result of modern education [in these two regions] was the emergence of a new reading public who, with renaissance zeal, applied themselves to reading European literatures directly in the original languages or else in Arabic translations," he says, their having turned away from "the official literature, which was expressed in the formalistic, lackluster poetry" of the epoch preceding the modern literary renaissance.
Increased exposure to Western culture thus paved the way for the Arabic novel's success at the end of the 19th century, the Khedive Ismail (1863-1879) in Egypt having "ushered in a new age of cultural enrichment" through his enlightened translation programmes. His predecessor, Mohamed Ali, had concentrated almost entirely on having only scientific works or school textbooks translated into Arabic, and "only one literary work was translated under his rule, Saadi's Gulistan from the Persian." Under Ismail, by contrast, "Egyptian translators now directed their efforts to literary works, largely casting aside their earlier principal role as translators of scientific and educational materials." This made Western literature popular, further promoting the use of the novel as a vehicle both for creative writing and for learned entertainment.
"Shaykh Muhammad Abduh," Sakkut says, "already as early as 1871, had called attention to the salutary influence which good novels could provide for readers. Undoubtedly, this positive vision of the potential of the novel helped encourage al-Manfaluti (1876-1924) as well as his immediate precursors and contemporaries to adopt the Western novel form outright."
Clockwise from top left: Taha Hussein, Naguib Mahfouz, Mohamed Hussein Haykal, Tawfiq El-Hakim, Youssef El-SebaĠi, Yehya Haqqi
While agreeing in the main with Sakkut's analysis of the novel's rise as an Arabic literary form, in his essay Asfour differs with Sakkut on two main points. The first of these is that Asfour, in line with most contemporary critics, prefers to place the birth of the novel in Europe in the early 17th century and not significantly later, as does Sakkut. Cervantes' Don Quixote was crucial here, since it "is with the beginning wrought by Cervantes (1547-1616)... that many historians document the true beginning of the modern novel, ... noting the emergent techniques of irony and parody that it employs." The second is that Asfour places the birth of the Arabic novel much later than does Sakkut. The latter places the event in 1865 with the publication, in the Levant, of Francis Marrash's Ghabat Al-Haqq (The Forest of Truth), "probably the first Arabic novel ever published." Asfour, on the other hand, is more traditional in his analysis, putting the novel's birth in Arabic some decades later in 1913/14 with the publication in Egypt of Mohamed Hussein Haykal's Zaynab, "a major landmark by any estimation" and, for Asfour, "the first novel in the history of [Arabic] writing and publishing."
Outside the present context, Asfour's perspective might seem broader and more discerning than Sakkut's, but the two writers' accounts serve radically different purposes. While Sakkut is eager to demarcate the territory covered by his bibliography as precisely as possible, placing little emphasis on the quality or the literary importance of particular works, Asfour, by contrast, is concerned to date the appearance of the Arabic novel as a consciously literary form, and for this reason he stresses the importance of certain works or figures over others, particularly since he believes that Haykal contributed much more to the development of the Arabic novel as a genre than did Marrash or his epigones. Though Zaynab, therefore, may not be exactly the first example of the novel in Arabic, nevertheless for critical and historical reasons it is held to represent the true beginning of the Arabic novel as a literary genre in its own right. Even Sakkut concedes this, writing that "most critics, however, are of the opinion, and rightly so, that the date of the first true novel, Egyptian or Arabic, in the precise definition of this term, was in 1913 when Mohamed Hussein Haykal's Zaynab came off the press."
Though the novel turns out to be a comparatively young form, this does not make the task of compiling a comprehensive bibliography of it any less Herculean, owing to both the number of works produced since the novel took root in the Arab world, developing through generations of writers, and the fact that the novel in Arabic spreads over a wide geographical range. Accordingly, in his "Critical Introduction," Sakkut divides the literature of the Arab World into that produced in three principal regions: Egypt, the Arab East (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, Sudan) and North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya). However, while he thus lays down an efficient geographical framework for his bibliography, the works touched on under these headings can still be little more than a representative sample of a much greater and more complex whole. "It typically happens," Sakkut writes for example, "that the majority of Egyptian readers are well acquainted with, or at least have some general notions about, Egyptian novels, while they may remain quite unaware about the situation of the novel in Libya or Algeria, or even in Lebanon... Hence, the following broad survey -- while concise and general -- is provided as a supplement to the bibliography of the novel."
Sakkut goes on to explain that for the benefit of both the Arab student or scholar and the English-speaking reader, he has chosen to tackle only "the most mature novels from all across the Arab World" in his survey, inevitably leaving out much of value. To a certain extent, his survey is something like a series of "highlights" from the literary scenes of various Arab countries, frequently seen from an Egyptian standpoint. Sakkut also indicates that his "study covers novelists up through what is called in Egypt 'the Generation of the 1960s', because they began writing in the 1960s... [Yet] although some of the authors produced fine novels in the decade, the majority wrote their most striking works in the seventies, the eighties and even into the nineties." As a result of these twin emphases, it might be felt that Sakkut's "Critical Introduction," at least, is a little Egyptocentric, and thus significantly distorted in a number of ways. From outside of Egypt, for example, Sakkut writes, "we have included only those novelists of the sixties and beyond, whose works, because of their intrinsic brilliance, have captured the attention of scholars all across the Arab World... the less prevalent trends such as science fiction, feminist literature, or the novels of the contemporary experimentalists... are beyond the scope of this introduction."
Within the "Critical Introduction", while the section on Egypt is comprehensive and interesting, comprising the pioneering authors (Haykal, Ibrahim Abdel-Qader El-Mazini, Tawfiq El-Hakim), as well as Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz and other, arguably minor, authors of his generation (Abdel-Hamid Goudah El-Sahhar, Ali Ahmed Bakathir, Adel Kamil), as well as Abdel-Rahman El-Sharqawi, Youssef Idris, Fathi Ghanem and five novelists from the generation of the 1960s, elsewhere in the volume other Arab literatures are less well-served. The section on North Africa, for example, though shedding much-needed light on works by authors little known outside their respective countries, is less impressive. Nevertheless, the "Critical Introduction" does sterling work in bringing the work of the Tunisian writer Muhsin bin Diyaf (b. 1932), or of the Moroccan Abd al-Karim Ghallab (b. 1919), for example, to the reader's attention, while also providing comprehensive reference to the work of better-known figures, such as that of Algerian novelist Al-Tahir Wattar or that of the Libyan Ibrahim Al-Kuni.
Sakkut's account of the role played by Tunisian writers in the Maghrebin literary renaissance is also impressive, combining expert research with concise writing and exposition. As such, it will be helpful and informative to both the serious scholar and the general reader. "In North Africa," Sakkut explains, "Tunisia led the way in the emergence of the Arabic novel, at least in terms of early publication. Not only did the Arabic novel appear very early in Tunisia in comparison with its neighbors, but also many novels were published in the early years right from the start. The Arab World is still waiting," he nevertheless adds on a wry note, "for a Tunisian novelist to produce a mature novel of aesthetic refinement, narrative élan, and psychological and/or cultural depth which would, so to speak, put Tunisian writers... among top-notch Arabic novelists."
The Indices (Vols. 2-6) to this publication provide a wealth of information, from brief biographies of Arab novelists to bibliographies of General Criticism in Arabic and in European Languages. The main body of the novels surveyed is listed in a number of ways: alphabetically (with lists of critical writings), alphabetically (without), chronologically across the Arab World and geographically by country. Such a system of cross-referencing should prove useful. In addition, there are lists of similar bibliographical works, as well as lists of books and periodicals dedicated to the novel. The arrangement of the material, which makes for six hefty volumes combines functionality with precision, and the volumes should satisfy most people's taste for information on this subject for some years to come. Yet Sakkut is also eager to stress that his bibliography -- other bibliographies of Arabic literature notwithstanding -- is still an ongoing endeavour, and he asks the reader to help rectify mistakes he may find in it, or to provide additional information for future editions.
"Imperfect" it will remain, by default, but Sakkut's Arabic Novel is a work of rare strength, and it will be an essential resource for anyone interested in the subject. More to the point, Sakkut's bibliography fills many of the gaps, and rectifies many of the errors to be found in Julie Scott Meisann and Paul Starkey's more general work, Encyclopeadia of Arabic Literature (Routledge, 1998), the most authoritative resource on the topic until the publication of the bibliography. Now that the biliography is available, perhaps it is a general bibliography of Arabic literature, conducted with the same degree of academic rigour, that is needed.
Reviewed by Youssef Rakha
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